Robert Johnson
The Centennial Collection

THE REVIEW

Pain is something real, so wrenching and powerful it shakes the foundations of the soul and brings to light things better left dormant. Blues is its music, played by desperate souls, by those who do not long for a caress or a hug but only to tell their torment, to unload that burden that bends their bones and makes them scream in the night onto someone.

Robert Johnson, the bluesman par excellence, was born exactly one hundred years ago, in the distant 1911 in Hazlehurst (United States), and this collection once again aims to celebrate his legend, to inscribe once again on optical media those immortal tracks that have inspired, and still inspire, artists from all over the world, who have found in that strange voice and incredible guitar an inspiration or a path to follow, in order to express their life with music and give voice to their hearts. In the end, what are we all looking for? A job? Love? Financial security? Yes, for heaven's sake, these are all important things, but in the end, deep down, everyone just wants to be heard, not understood, because the mystery surrounding a man is so unfathomable that it is unknown even to the one living it. It is hard not to feel alone in a world that sometimes is either too fast for you or you are too ahead for it, so you scan the eyes of passersby looking for a light, a glimmer that makes you exclaim: "Wow, finally someone like me! Now I can talk, stop being silent!" But that light doesn’t always appear, in fact, most times you see nothing but the flashes of your own thoughts, and then you convince yourself that that's just how it works, no one cares about your story and your emotions, you can search and search but in the end, the prize is just a great pain in the legs and that physical exhaustion that leads to sleep, and hopefully dream. There is, however, another way of storytelling that is equally effective: listening. We are not the only wandering souls; there are many ready to unfold their stories, so why not listen to them? Why not let their words muffle those "hellhounds" that tear chunks of flesh from your bones every day, only to leave you on the ground alone and wounded? We should not take on the burden of others' pain, heaven forbid, we are already laden enough, but we can let it float, to look at it and perhaps understand and fight it.

But it's too hard to stop running, isn't it? As long as we run, the "dogs" can't bite us, or at least we want to believe so, since, anyway, at the end of the day they are there, hungry, and you are too tired to fight them, so you let them feast, closing your eyes and praying to sleep; the next day everything starts again, on the run again through the city's streets, already tired after just a couple of hours of fleeing. But if we desire a break, why don't we stop? Why, if someone offers us their refuge, do we run even faster? Maybe we see in others a reflection of ourselves, or we are so distrustful that we mistake a palace for a cold, dark cave, or maybe, more simply, slowing down means shortening too much the distance between us and our personal "bloodhounds."

"Hey, but you haven't talked about the album!" Oh, that's right! So: there are two CDs in a plastic case, accompanied by a nice booklet with pictures and explanatory notes. If you place one of the two optical discs in the player, you hear a man playing a guitar.